Follow the Money

Troubled Asset Relief Program, otherwise known as TARP, was expected to cost taxpayers $700 billion. Now we have an updated cost of just $25 billion. Gregory Warner explains.

The TARP, also known as the bank bailout, ends this weekend. Well, maybe "ends" is a strong word. But the Treasury Department will stop spending and lending new money from the current $475 billion fund. It's about two years old. Jeremy Hobson reports the program become less popular than most screaming toddlers.

Marketplace's Jeremy Hobson takes a look at the beginnings of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and why it has such a bad rap even though it did help stabilize banks.

Big banks may be loosening its purse strings a bit -- Citigroup just made a multi-million-dollars-a-year hire. Is this a sign that Wall Streeters can expect pre-recessionary salaries?

Banks were saved from the cliff's edge with billions of dollars of TARP money. But commentator David Frum asks, do voters care that things could have been worse without the federal government's bailout?

The SEC said it will not seek fraud charges against the ratings agency Moody's for claims that it inflated ratings on some European debt just before the financial crisis. Plus, watch a video explainer on how ratings agencies get paid by the companies they rate.

President Obama has proposed a tax on banks that would be used to cover the government's losses from the bank bailout. But the tax would also be intended to head off a future financial crisis. Nancy Marshall Genzer explains.

The TARP is expected to be phased out this year, but a report out by the Congressional Oversight Panel is raising concerns about how the government intends to do that. Steve Chiotakis Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the panel.